1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer implemented navigation systems used in surgical procedures.
2. Background of the Invention
Computerized surgical navigation systems are used to help guide a surgeon operating on a patient. In many instances, the use of navigation systems enables the surgeon to perform a surgery on a patient in a minimally invasive manner. For example, a navigation system helps the surgeon visualize or see the location of a surgical tool in relation to portions of the body that are not directly visible to the surgeon, such as organs or bones on the inside of the body, by showing on a display apparatus such as a television monitor or computer monitor the position of the surgical tool in relation to the portion inside the body. Thus, smaller and/or fewer incisions into the body are needed because the surgeon does not need a direct visual line of sight to a location of interest inside the body. Surgical navigation systems may also be used in other types of surgery, such as an orthopedic procedure, to help guide the surgeon while making cuts and/or placing objects on the patient's bones, for example, in positions that have been planned and marked with respect to pre-operative images taken of the body but without having to directly mark such locations on the patient's body.
There are many types of navigation systems that have been developed to assist with surgical procedures. In one well known exemplary navigation system, a multi-camera navigation system in communication with a computer processor tracks tracking devices with LED's that flash and have a known spatial configuration. One or more tracking devices called tool trackers are attached to surgical tools in a known spatial configuration, and such information is located in a database available to the computer processor. One or more tracking devices called patient trackers are also attached in a fixed position to the patient, such as with pins inserted into a bone. A set of two, three, or more tracking cameras, such as charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras, are located within an operating room and are connected to the computer processor. The CCD cameras are positioned in a known, fixed relation with each other, such as on a single bar, so that images from each of the three cameras may be processed and combined to triangulate the position of the trackers as viewed by the CCD cameras. In this system, the computer processor is used to concatenate several different position vectors including positional vectors from the cameras to the tool trackers and positional vectors from the cameras to the patient trackers to track the position of surgical tools with respect to the body. With appropriate registration of various coordinate systems performed by the computer processor, the position of the tool may then be shown on a display monitor in registration with a scan image of the patient, such as an X-ray, ultra-sound, MRI, or CT scan image or the like, that shows various points of interest on the inside of the body. Although such navigation systems are highly effective in helping the surgeon navigate a tool inside the body without being able to see directly into the body, this system takes a large amount of computing resources in order to make the required mathematical transformations of the various positional vectors from the cameras to the tool trackers and the cameras to the patient trackers. Although ongoing improvement in computing technology reduces the amount of time necessary to make such calculations, because the navigation is performed in real time during the surgery, any increase in the speed of calculation such as by reducing the amount of computing resources necessary would be desirable. Some exemplary surgical navigation systems based generally on this type of technology are disclosed in Chader U.S. Pat. No. 5,617,857, Schulz U.S. Pat. No. 5,622,170, Faul et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,497,134, Faul et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,608,688, and Malackowski et al. U.S. Pat. No. 7,725,162, each of which is incorporated in its entirety herein.
Another type of surgical navigation system includes a navigation camera is attached directly to a surgical tool for insertion into a patient's body. A target patch with optical navigation markers, printed thereon, is placed on the patient's body at or near a desired point of entry into the body. The patch is registered with the body, and the camera views the patch as the surgical tool is inserted into the patient's body. The camera is connected to a computer processor, which is programmed to process images of the optical navigation markers from the camera to determine a position of the surgical tool in reference to the patch and, thereby, the patient's body. Thus, the computer processor is able to process the images of the patch with the navigation markers thereon taken by the camera to track the position of, for example, a tip of the surgical tool that has been inserted in the body subcutaneously and displays such position on a computer monitor in registration with a scan image of the area of interest. An example of such a system is disclosed in more detail in Gilboa U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0208041, which is incorporated herein in its entirety. Although useful for navigating the surgical tool, this surgical navigation system requires that each surgical tool has its own tracking camera attached thereto and/or tracking patch for attachment to the patient's body that has been adapted specifically for a particular use with a particular surgical instrument and/or procedure. In addition, having a camera placed on the surgical tool itself may be cumbersome to the surgeon by adding weight or wires thereto.
Thus, the inventor of the present invention believes that it would be advantageous to overcome one or more of the challenges of these prior art navigation systems, such as reducing the amount of computing resources necessary to track the position of the tool tracker with respect to the patient's body and show such position in registration with a scan image of the body, removing cumbersome objects such as cameras from surgical tools, and providing a single system that may be readily and easily adaptable for use with many different instruments and procedures.